The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1887-08-11
FACTS ABOUT PAPER.
Origin and Growth of Ono of the Worlds
Most Important Industries.


Most Important Industries.
The Chinese are credited with being
the first to reduce vegetable matter to
the fiber and web which constitute
modern paper. According to Gibbon,
the art of manufacture from this mate
rial was introduced from China into
Samarcand, city of Asia Minor. in
651. Here the new method soon took
shape and modern paper-making be-
came quite an industry in the city. In
704 the Saracens, a fierce, warlike tribe
of Arabs, captured the city and learned
the art of paper-making, which they in
troduced into Mecca three years later.
In I'll they made descent on Spain,
making themselves masters of that
country, and established paper-making
upon good footing there. By this
time raw cotton had become the chief
material of manufacture. During the
reign of the Saracens and Moors in
Spain the industry fiourished and pa
per became the universal writing ma
terial. The Spanish introduced cotton
rags in 1885 as a material of manufact-
ure, and soon afterward linen rags.
This was probably the first use of rags
in paper-making.
Paper can now be made from almost
any fibrous substance, but the chief ma
terial of manufacture still remains rags,
straw, old paper, cotton waste, manila,
jute, esparto grass, wood pulp and
chemicals. The introduction of wood
pulp into paper-making is the most inn
portant improvement made in tho
manufacture within the last half-cent-
ury, for without it the immense editions
of the great dailies would be impossible,
and that wonderful piece of mechanism
and ingenuity, the web perfecting or
"lightning" press, a dead letter. Paper
made entirely from rags does not take
as kindly to printers ink as is desirable
and has tendency to clog the type,
necessitating frequent stoppages of the
press to wash off the clogging in run
ming off a large edition. Paper con-
tanning wood pulp has natural affinity
to printers ink and receives the inn
| preston almost instantaneously, with
out the least soiling or clogging of the
type or stereotype plate.
Papyrus, by which name paper was
first known, was made by the Egyp-
tians thousands of years before the
| Christian era. There is one specimen
of the paper preserved at Paris con-
tanning poem on one of the Kings Of
the fifth Egyptian dynasty which must
| have been written at least two thou
sand years before Christ. The manu-
facture of papyrus was at one time a
great industry among the Egyptians.
They had the exclusive monopoly
throughout the entire East. and also
among the Greeks and Romans and
other countries of the West 1t con-
tinued to be the chief writing-material
down to the beginning of the eighth
century, when the era of modern paper
| dawned.
There is hardly any commodity OIL
article of manufacture that is used in a
greater number of things than paper.
In addition to the common run of things
into which it enters. it is now used in
this country in making water-pails,
wash-tubs, papier mache, sheathing for
/ vessels, car-wheels, and innumerable
other things. In England they have
used it for water-pipes and tanks, and
they say that it wards off frost better
than lead or iron. The Chinese and
Japanese make clothing. hats, UNI
brellas, napkins, handkerchiefs, twine
wine- bags and even furniture out of it
The United States makes consider
ably more than half the entire paper
supply of the whole globe. Massachu
setts leads all the other States in the
Union in the manufacture of both writ
ing and printing papers. In fact, very
little writing paper is made in tht
United States outside of Massachusetts,
New York takes the lead in wrapping
and wall papers, and is closing up tc
the heels of Massachusetts, in printing
papers. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maine
Connecticut and Delaware are well III
in printing-papers, while Vernon
comes out best in tissue-paper.
| During the fourteenth century the ar
of manufacture became introduced int
most countries of Europe, and mad
rapid progress in some of them, notabl.
France, Holland and Genoa. Mos
papal bulls of the eighth century wer
written on cotton paper. The frag
ments of St. Marks gospel preserves
at Venice have been claimed to be writ
ten on both cotton and linen paper, bu
neither claim is correct, for they ar
really written on skins. Chicago Neacs
AS guide to the observation Q
travellers and explorers, DIR. Topinard
the well-known French anthropologist
I x~E al. EvrIvr